Global shipments of smart devices top 300 million in the first quarter; Tablets growing fastest

Canalys‘ latest figures show that the global shipments of “smart devices” — comprising notebooks, tablets and smartphones — have hit 309 million units in the first quarter of the year, representing 37.4% growth year-on-year.

Of all smart devices, tablets were growing at a fastest pace, with some 41.9 million units shipped for 106% growth compared with the same period the year before.

Smartphone shipments numbered around 216 million units for the quarter, a year-on-year growth of 48%.

On the other hand, we have notebook shipments which totaled 50.5 million units, representing (another) quarterly contraction of 13%. The biggest decline was in Western Europe, where shipments fell by 25% on an annual basis.

When it comes to platforms, Android continues to dominate, accounting for 59.5% of all smart mobile devices shipped. In the tablet space, however, Apple is still market leader with 46.4% of the market, but it did lose ground to Android-based rivals for the third consecutive quarter.

Android-based handsets accounted for 75.6% of total smartphone shipments during the quarter, with Samsung dominating once again, growing its year-on-year volume by 64.3%. In contrast, Apple saw modest annual growth of 6.7% in its smartphone shipments, though it did manage to ship over 37 million iPhones. Huawei, LG and ZTE complete the top-five smartphone vendors, but each have less than 5% market share…